One of the greatest tools for sales reps of the 21st century so far is web conferencing. Products like GoToMeeting, Webex, and Sametime dramatically changed how sales rep work. These products allow reps to avoid costly plane and overnight trips to show a prospect or customer their products and services. It has become the single most important technology in qualifying customers at a fraction of the cost it did before. While video conferencing has been around for a while it was too costly and complicated for sales reps that need speed, simplicity, and flexibility.

Any CRM solution you want to use should have direct integration with a web conferencing tool. The ones I have used like Relavis CRM and SalesForce.com have integrated these solutions directly into their activity management component. When scheduling a meeting within CRM you are able to hit a button on the form that will automatically create the web meeting, place all the connection and phone information into the invitation and mailed to the attendees. It is a great time saver for reps as well as allows you to track these meetings back to a specific lead, opportunity or contact. Web conference solutions keep track of number of attendees, length of time and you can record the entire meeting for play back later.

While I am sure many reps are now taking advantage of this technology with either corporate or individual accounts you should be tying it into your CRM solution so you get to create and track it in one place. It is an amazing time saver especially if you need to go back to review the history of the account. Or if a team member or manager missed the meeting and wants to review what happened.

Prospects and customer find web meetings far less intrusive on their time. It can be done totally at their convenience and at their desk.

Web conferencing should not totally eliminate visiting with your customers and prospects. Remember 90% of closing business is showing up. But it is a great tool for qualify and delivering information quickly and cost effectively.

Example of Web Conferencing Integration When Creating a Meeting in CRM

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Tags: crm productivity

Purchasing consulting services is key to a successful implementation. I am not talking multimillion dollar Accenture engagements (amazingly there are still those still going on) but a reasonable amount to help jump start the project. You should expect to budget about $0.5-$2 of services for every dollar of product. This will vary whether you have chosen an on-premise or hosted solution.

For end-users the key services you should not skip on are configuration and training. You will get your biggest return here. You do not want to spend time drilling through manuals trying to figure out what all the different parameters are and how they interact. Having someone with you to ask the right questions about your business and take you through the configuration process will save you a lot of time and money. And do I need to say anything about the importance of training other than don’t make it the first thing to cut when your budget is low. Getting users up and running and feeling confident with the solution is cornerstone for success, Cut somewhere else.

If you are using an on-premise solution then IT would need to know how to maintain and support the system. While a class is great, IT folks are very good at drilling into manuals to find what they need. Also software support is kind of universal. The backing up, archiving, security, etc… are consistent items they deal with on all the software they support? The technical manuals are usually all they need. For hosted solutions very little will be needed from your IT staff.

A programmer will probably need to get involved if you are integrating other backend system data to CRM. Depending on what the goal is it might be cheaper and certainly much faster to contract that service out. If you see this as an ongoing requirement then sending a programmer to class will be worth it.

When budgets are tight, carefully evaluate what will give you the most for your dollars but also what the true cost will be if you did it yourself. The extra hours people spend trying to figure it themselves might offset any savings you think you are getting.

Tags: Add new tag, Consulting, CRM Basics

I thought the topic was worth talking about again as I continue to find lead handling one of the biggest challenges companies face.

Companies spend a lot of money generating leads, the life blood of their organization, but allow the lead process to break down as soon as they are entered into a system (even worse if there is no system to collect them). They complain that their leads fall into a black hole. So just having a place to collect them does not solve the black hole problem.

Lead capture should be as automated as possible. Only buy a CRM solution that gives you the capability to capture and route leads into a database. There should be a plug in for website capture as well as the ability to manually enter them. Most CRM systems provide a utility so you can input leads or lists as well. It should also allow you to easily track activities against them and convert them to an opportunity.

Now that you have them in one place you need to ensure you are tracking things like source (where did it come from, i.e. web, tradeshow, campaign, etc…), status (suspect, prospect, hot lead, etc…), and rep (who is initially responsible for it). Of cause you need the usual fields such as contact info and what products they are interested in. By carrying this information you can always see what has transpired with the lead. Even if leads are sent to channel partners this information is even more critical so you have a complete record and can question your partners about it. You want a system that has seamless integration with your email platform and a workflow process that automatically notifies the appropriate rep via email of a new lead. This really helps timely responses back to any lead inquiry.

Another must have is the ability to see lead to opportunity statistics. You want to easily analyze the effectiveness of various lead sources with statistics on closed opportunities resulting from leads. This is the only way you can really see if your marketing dollars are being spent wisely. My guess is most companies would be very surprised on what is really working. Solutions like Relavis CRM provide both real time analysis as well as reports you can run.

Some other nice to have features are:

• Lead Categorization and Search
• Duplication of lead handling
• Automatic Lead Routing
• Lead Scripting
• Lead Conversion
• Lead History
• Rep Generated Email Prospecting

Example of a lead form

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics